by Barry Reese
A murmuring went through the crowd and Mr. Death had to admit to himself that he felt it, too—a stirring deep down in the black pit of his soul. Max Davies was an inspiration, even to those who should have been his mortal enemy.
He wondered if that was why The Peregrine was still alive, that there was something innately different about him and his fellow survivors. Were Lazarus Gray, Gravedigger and The Peregrine cut from a different cloth, even from other vigilantes?
The world would be a darker place when they were gone.
Silence fell once more as The Füehrer rose from his seat. He opened his mouth and everyone, including Mr. Death, leaned forward, eager to hear what he would say before condemning the masked man to death.
What those words would have been, no one would ever get the chance to know.
Mr. Death would later believe that he had heard the crossbow bolt whistling through the air in the seconds before it pierced Hitler’s throat. Whether or not that was true, the fact was that one of the most evil men in history was struck down before the eyes of hundreds of people. Blood spurted from the wound, splashing straight onto Himmler’s shocked face, and screams immediately rang out into the night.
The one responsible for Hitler’s death made her presence known quickly enough. Gravedigger jumped from the shadows, her blade flashing in the floodlights as it delivered more death. Soldiers died quickly, the victims of not only her consummate skill but the terrible rage that made her movements all the more impassioned.
Mr. Death sprang to his feet and looked towards The Peregrine. If Gravedigger were here, could Lazarus Gray be far behind?
As if on cue, the broad-shouldered figure of Gray burst onto the wooden platform, knocking aside the guards who had been watching over The Peregrine.
“Do something!” hissed The Mother of Pus. She was glaring at him with a fury that spurred him to action.
“Yes, mother,” he murmured, hoping that she didn’t sense his glee.
He jumped towards Lazarus Gray and The Peregrine, his cloak billowing out behind him. When he landed, he approached cautiously and shouted, “You realize you can’t escape, don’t you? You’re so vastly outnumbered that it’s a miracle you’re not both dead already.”
Lazarus smiled grimly. “I think you’re underestimating how resourceful we can be.”
At just that moment, several nearby buildings, all of which had been retrofitted into Nazi government usage, suddenly exploded. Lazarus and Gravedigger had been hoarding as many homemade explosives as possible, knowing that at some point they would be needed. All during the day they had hidden them near this area, priming them for just the right time.
Debris rained down through the air and the screams grew louder, as panicked spectators began rushing from the scene. In the skies above, horrible bat-winged creatures began to fly into view, summoned from their perches several blocks away.
Lazarus grabbed The Peregrine and led him down a nearby alleyway, hoping that Mr. Death would be too distracted by the explosions to notice which direction they went. “We need to find a way out of here.”
The Peregrine looked at him in surprise. “You didn’t plan an escape route? That’s a pretty essential part of these things!”
“We were more focused on surviving long enough to get you out of there alive.”
“What about Charity?”
“She can handle herself,” Lazarus said, jerking back as he reached the intersection of the alley and the next street. A black sedan roared around and the corner, squealing to a stop in front of them. The driver jumped out, leaving the door open and the engine running.
Lazarus let out a gasp. “You’re alive?”
The Darkling drew his pistols, brandishing one in each hand. “Get down.”
Neither The Peregrine nor Lazarus asked why. They hit the ground, allowing The Darkling to pull the triggers on his automatics. Lazarus glanced behind him, seeing several pursuing SS soldiers felled by the volley.
Mr. Death appeared then, a gleeful cackle emanating from behind his skull-like visage.
“Go,” The Darkling said, moving past the now rising heroes. “I will hold him off while you escape.
“Come with us,” The Peregrine whispered.
“I don’t fear death, my friends. I’ve seen it up close too many times for it to hold any mystery for me.”
Mr. Death, hearing this, touched his chest and stopped. “Death holds no mystery? You wound me! I have some stories that will put a blush on those cheeks! And I do have to say, I love your tailor!”
The Darkling sprinted forward, launching himself in the air. He tumbled head over foot, firing as he did so, and landed as smoothly as an Olympic gymnast. His shots would have killed any normal man but his foe today was nothing like his usual foes.
Mr. Death tumbled down the alleyway, dodging each of the bullets by mere inches. He sprang up just as The Darkling landed and the two men were suddenly face-to-face, their skull faces so close that each could smell the breath of the other.
The Darkling struck first, striking Mr. Death across the chin with the butt of a pistol. If Mr. Death felt woozy after taking such a powerful blow, he didn’t show it. Instead, he reached out with both hands, seizing The Darkling’s head in a powerful grip. He began to dig both thumbs into the hero’s eye sockets and only a quick knee to the midsection stopped Mr. Death from permanently blinding his enemy.
“Let’s go,” The Peregrine said, pulling away from Lazarus and diving behind the wheel of the waiting car.
“I thought you were all about going back for our lost comrades,” Lazarus pointed out, moving into the passenger seat.
“Like you said, they can take of themselves. Besides, if I’m honest with you, none of this is going to matter anyway. Not if I play my cards right. And we have Mr. Death to thank for it!”
Lazarus barked out a few directions, which The Peregrine eagerly began taking, propelling the vehicle down the road at great speed. Soon enough, the chaos was behind them and Lazarus asked, “Mind telling me what the cryptic talk is all about?”
The Peregrine reached into a pocket and pulled out an emerald glove that he tossed into the lap of his companion. “Recognize that?”
“Yes. How did you get it?”
“Believe it or not, Mr. Death gave it to me.”
“It must be a trap.”
“I don’t think so. Andre appeared to me after I got hold of it. He says there’s enough magic in it to perform one last feat of power.”
“We better make it a good one.”
The Peregrine grinned. “I’ve been thinking about that and I think I might have one hell of an idea.”
CHAPTER XIV
Hy-Brasil
“Hy-Brasil is a phantom island which is said to lie west of Ireland. Supposedly it’s cloaked in mist, visible only one day every seven years. Even then, reaching the island is fraught with peril.”
Lazarus Gray sat across the table from The Peregrine, trying not to let his eyes wander over to the clock on the wall. They’d been back for nearly two hours and Gravedigger hadn’t returned. The official state radio was giving few details about the incident downtown, not even confirming The Füehrer’s death.
“You’re not listening to me, are you?” The Peregrine asked.
“Sorry.”
The Peregrine stood up and moved to the battered coffee pot in the corner. He poured himself some and took a sip. “It’s okay. If I were in your position, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. The two of you have grown pretty close, haven’t you?”
“We have.”
“Understandable.” The Peregrine took a deep breath, pushing thoughts of Evelyn out of his mind. He knew that Lazarus had lost his own bride and he knew the pain that had obviously eaten away at Gray’s soul. If he’d been in the other man’s shoes, he might have taken whatever solace was available to him, as well.
Lazarus cleared his throat and said, “Please, continue. You were talking about Hy-Brasil?”
“Yes. B
ack before all this madness took over our lives, I’d been looking into it because the mystical community was starting to buzz about its reappearance. Supposedly, the island exists in a place where time and space are somewhat… loose, for lack of a better term. Throughout the ages, men and women have attempted to journey there so they could use its nature for time travel.”
“You’re telling me that this island can allow for people to actually transport to another era?”
“Yes, but with limitations. A person can only access time periods that are of great personal importance to them and of a fairly recent vintage. I couldn’t go back to Hitler’s birth and kill him, for instance, but I might be able to return to something that happened a year or two ago.”
Understanding began to glimmer in Gray’s eyes. “And if you go back in time, can you change it?”
“That’s the idea. Of course, there’s always the chance that it will only create another stream of time where things were different, that this universe will continue on.” The Peregrine shook his head. “I don’t think that’s going to be the case here, though. I think the extra magic we’re getting from Catalyst’s gauntlet will be enough to help us change history.”
“Sounds like you’re grasping at straws,” Lazarus said. “But it’s the best we’ve got. So we have to find our way to this island, I take it?”
“Yes. And because things seem to have a way of falling into place—call it coincidence, destiny or divine providence—Hy-Brasil’s reappearance happens to be taking place right now. We should have just enough time to get there, use the natural flow of the island to travel back in time, and hopefully utilize the gauntlet to restore the proper reality to our lives. I have no idea if we’ll even remember all of this if we succeed.”
“I think we’d all be just as happy letting this world fade into obscurity.”
“Agreed.”
Movement from outside made both men go on alert. The Peregrine drew The Knife of Elohim and took note of the fact that it was not glowing its traditional golden. This meant that whatever lay on the other side of the door was not inherently evil.
Lazarus had noticed this as well, but he still drew his pistol as he moved to the door.
Before he could say anything, a series of knocks came and he visibly relaxed, recognizing the code. He yanked open the door and stepped back as Gravedigger staggered in. Her red, white, and black uniform was ripped and torn in dozens of places, revealing streaks of blood and rapidly-forming bruises. Still, she seemed mostly intact as she made her way to a chair and sat down with a groan.
Lazarus was quickly at her side, kneeling and placing a hand on her knee. “What happened?”
“Anarchy,” she answered with a quiet laugh. “The streets are teeming with monsters, human and otherwise. Goebbels and Himmler are trying to act in concert for the moment but it’s not working well. Both of them are being dictated to by the Mother of Pus, anyway.”
The Peregrine asked, “Do you know what happened to The Darkling? Or Mr. Death?”
“No. Should I?”
“When we left them, The Darkling was running interference for us.” The Peregrine shrugged his shoulders. “It was his choice to make but I certainly hope he was able to escape.”
“I didn’t even realize he was still alive.”
Lazarus stood up. “I think that’s the way he wanted it. Let me patch up your friends and then Max can tell you about an idea that he has.”
“If it involves running away, I might be willing to listen. Let the monsters turn on themselves for a little while and then we can make a comeback to hurt them some more.”
“This is better,” Lazarus replied. “We might be able to not only defeat them for good, but make all of this go away forever.”
Charity pushed back her hood and then peeled her mask away from her face. She was still a beautiful woman but the terrors of the last year had aged her, adding wrinkles and lines that hadn’t been there before. Though she and Lazarus didn’t talk about it much, they were both acutely aware that 1939 was a date of great importance to her. On Halloween night, The Voice would judge her, deciding if she’d done enough in her three years as Gravedigger in order to redeem her soul. Given the state of the world, it was going to be hard to argue that she’d improved things on the mortal plane. Despite that, she kept fighting the good fight not to save herself but to save others. It was that kind of steely determination that Lazarus saw now in her eyes and it filled him with respect.
She smiled wryly. “Please, tell me more.”
* * *
It hovered in the air before her, its monstrosity difficult for human words to convey. An elephantine trunk hung loosely from its face, the skin mottled and covered with open sores. Its eyes were like two dark pits of stygian darkness, lit only by tiny pinpricks of malevolent red-tinted light.
The Mother of Pus knelt before it, keeping her eyes downcast. It had said nothing since manifesting in her quarters but its distaste for her was almost palpable. At first, she had feared that it had come to dispose of her as punishment for her failures but now she knew that this was the equivalent of a psychological beat-down, with the strange entity serving dual roles of punisher and counselor. Images were flooding through her mind, showing her the fates that would await her if she continued to falter in her duties but simultaneously she experienced the euphoria of total victory, of a universe that was nothing but chaos and pain, the ultimate triumph for her kind.
“I won’t fail you again,” she whispered.
Another wave of pain washed over her, reducing her to a shivering mass in its wake. She could sense its psychic accusations and had no ready reply for them. She had surrounded herself with human liars and malcontents. She had allowed preening fools like Hitler to strut about as if he held true power and, worse yet, she had given a monstrosity like Mr. Death a place of honor in her court. Though she couldn’t prove it, she was positive that Death had played a part in The Peregrine’s escape. It had all seemed too convenient and, with Mr. Death missing now, his guilt seemed to have been confirmed.
She rose to her feet, realizing that their “conversation” was nearing its end. Still without looking at her master, she asked, “When I find The Peregrine and his friends, should I kill them? Or would you want me to turn them over to you?”
The reply was so powerful that she nearly tumbled back to the floor. It resonated inside of her skull, echoing so loudly that it seemed to be imprinted on the back of her eyelids, pulsing at her like a neon sign every time she closed her eyes:
KILL THEM.
Slowly nodding, she whispered, “And so it shall be done.”
* * *
The Sovereign City Harbor had once been part of the beating heart of the city. Criminals and lowlifes had dominated its landscape, to be sure, but it was also the quickest way to reach The Heart of Fortune, the massive floating casino that had belonged to Fortune McCall. Like so many others, McCall and his associates were now dead, their bodies lying on the ocean floor along with the splintered remains of the boat they had once called home.
Lazarus Gray found it ironic that he almost missed the not-too-distant days when this area had been home to mobsters and thieves. That was far preferable to what lay along the waters these days… horrible half-human, half-fish creatures that had been dubbed Deep Ones. Cultists who worshiped the beasts were plentiful as well, keeping the Deep Ones well-stocked in both food and female flesh. The male Deep Ones had an almost insatiable desire to breed, not only with their own females but with human.
The three heroes crouched low, hiding behind several large crates, eyeing their prize: a 1930 motor yacht with the name The Glass Throne emblazoned along the side. The unusually named boat had been the property of Theodore Groseclose, the erstwhile publisher of The Sovereign Gazette. Though rarely used, the showpiece boat was well-known in the area and Groseclose occasionally posed with it in promotional photographs.
The thin line that was Gray’s lips grew even more taut when he thought of
The Dark Gentleman, Theodore’s son. Another life lost in the nightmare of this new world.
Several figures moved across the deck of The Glass Throne: cultists, dressed in crimson and black. They were on alert, frightened by the news they’d heard regarding the botched execution. All of them brandished firearms and Lazarus could tell that their trigger fingers could accurately be described as “itchy.”
“No sign of any Deep Ones,” Gravedigger whispered, her voice sounding muffled by her mask. “If all we have to deal with are cultists, this could go really smoothly.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” The Peregrine replied. He held The Knife of Elohim in his right hand. The blade was shining with gold-colored light. “There’s plenty of evil around here. Too much for just those kooks on the deck.”
Lazarus pointed out to the dark waters. “There.”
The Peregrine spotted it then, a thick tentacle that broke the surface of the water and then slid back down into the murky depths. “A good old-fashioned Kraken?”
“Whatever it is, we’ll kill it,” Gravedigger said. She raised her wrist-mounted crossbow, a bolt sliding automatically in place from the apparatus attached to her forearm. It was an ingenious device and The Peregrine had wondered briefly if he should try and add something similar to his own arsenal. “I’m going to take out the men on deck.”
Lazarus nodded, knowing with full certainty that she would kill each of them with unerring accuracy. Indeed, the first bolt whistled through the air and landed directly in the side of her target’s skull. Even as the next bolt slid into place, she was taking aim and firing. Over the next few seconds, she fired four more times, each time leaving a body that tumbled to the deck.
